Re: Book Recommendations

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 02:45 PM 11/12/02 -0500, Paul Kraus wrote:
>What books would you recommend?

Alice in Wonderland, A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gatsby, Zen and the Art 
of Motorcycle Maintenance, Goodnight Moon ... oh wait! You want computer 
books. See below.

>If it seems broad it is supposed to be :) I want recommendation on
>newbie, intermediate, advanced, scripting, programming, and security :)

OK. Seriously now. Technical books are not good in the abstract; they are 
useful for particular purposes. Without a better understanding of your 
needs, anyone here who makes recommendations is shooting in the dark. With 
that warning ...

newbie -- haven't been one in a long time. Back in 1993, there were no 
books for Linux beginners (there barely was Linux itself ... I never did 
manage a successful install of Yggdrasil). I still have the O'Reilly 
Essential System Administration from those days (actually, I replaced my 
original copy with the second edition), and though I never refer to it any 
more, in the early days, struggling with early versions of Slackware,  it 
was an everyday tool.  It's probably too out of date for use today (unless 
I missed a 3e), but I'd look for something like it. I'd also look closely 
at some of the book-level materials available from the Linux Documentation 
Project (the URL keeps changing, so google the phrase). Every 
beginner-level "Intro to Linux" book I've ever read (I used to review them 
for an online site) was junk, as were most "Intro to Unix" books.

intermediate, advanced -- here you move into specifics too quickly for a 
general answer. I find the O'Reilly Internet Core Protocols book almost 
indispensible (I refer to it at least weekly), and I still occasionally use 
the O'Reilly TCP/IP Network Administration. Among the others I keep around 
(offered not as suggestions for you, but illustrations of how quickly this 
area moves into esoteric specifics) are the PostScript Red, Blue, and Green 
books; several texts on data structures and algorithms; several books on 
user-interface design; and a book that discusses the details of the PPP 
protocol. (I rarely consult any of these, but when the occasion arises, I 
find their availability a real timesaver.) I also liked Elias' suggestion 
here, but I don't actually own  the Tannenbaum book he recommended, since I 
don't do a lot of OS development.

scripting, programming -- I'm not a good bash scripter, so I'll pass there. 
This area is, of necessity, language specific. I program in Perl, C, and 
C++ on Linux, and I actually use these books:

         Perl -- Programming Perl and Perl Cookbook (both O'Reilly 
publications).

         C -- Practical C Programming (O'Reilly) and Linux Application 
Development (Addision-Wesley). Beware of the original K&R C book that Elias 
suggested; it predates the ANSI C spec by many years, and the spec departed 
from it in ways that matter. I also like Kernighan and Pike's The Practice 
of Programming. The Stevens set Elias suggested is a classic, but I don't 
actually own it either.

         C++ -- Practical C++ Programming (O'Reilly). I also like Bulka and 
Mayhew's Efficient C++ ... but it is a couple of years old now, and there 
are probably better, newer books.

security -- it's a jungle out there, and security moves too fast for books 
to keep up. I do like Schneier's Applied Cryptography ... but every other 
security book I've ever bought seemed outdated within 3 months. Your best 
resource here is the Internet -- start with your Linux distro's security 
mailing list, perhaps add in a general-purpose list like bugtraq, and 
follow the leads they offer.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
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